Feelings
by Aisling Yinyr Ngaio
Summary: Tseng thinks about what he really feels towards Aeris. Oneshot.


**_Feelings_**  
_An FFVII fanfic by Aisling Yinyr Ngaio  
_

* * *

If one were to ask him what he felt towards her, and if he were the type to answer, he would probably say "It's complicated". Strange perhaps, considering he was her longest… not friend, but perhaps acquaintance… the longest constant in her life, excepting perhaps her birth mother, if she was to be believed.

He was in his early twenties when he first met her. She was classified as nothing more than one of Hojo's lab rats then, one to be pitied but ultimately ignored in the line of duty. He could do nothing for she and her mother, and he won't ever dream of trying. He'd heard the whispers even back then that they were the last of their kind, and held the key to some secret, but he wasn't senior enough to ask, even if he wasn't a Turk who was forbidden to everything but orders.

It was only when they both succeeded in escaping that he truly saw them for the first time. Out of the lab's poisonous environment, he suddenly felt the true aura they radiated even in their desperation. He knew not how, but they felt… purer, higher, somehow more than mere humans. There was a reverence in his mind that he simply couldn't account for. That he pursued them yet failed to restrain and recapture them, that they managed to flee all the way to the Midgar slums, was not due to his incompetence. He was their shadow all the way from the Shinra Headquarters to the train depot of the Sector 5 slums. He could have done it – was well trained for it – at any moment of his pursuit. Subdue the already wounded mother, and the daughter will naturally follow. But he didn't. He couldn't.

Vague phrases and insinuations in the report was the only thing that saved him from a quick expulsion – no Turk ever retired alive. He didn't exactly lie, but he didn't report the whole truth. He was therefore relieved to be alive, but only barely. His next orders were to find the girl and bring her back into Shinra's custody. One look in Veld's eyes and he knew why he was assigned no partner. And yet… Veld's orders had no deadline.

So he returned to the slums. He knew exactly where she was living. He knew she couldn't leave for the foreseeable future. She was free of Hojo, but not of Shinra. As he spoke to her new mother, he saw her running down the stairs in joyful exuberance which died the moment she saw him.

It was difficult for him even then to pinpoint exactly what he felt for her. As a mere seven-year-old, he felt the separation in years keenly. He was not physically old enough to be her father, but his experience in the Turks had already mentally aged him to the point where he felt disconnected to anyone not wearing the suit. So yes, he felt a little paternalistic towards her in the beginning, mixed in between the oddly inexplicable reverence that he still felt – perhaps not as keenly as towards her birth mother, but she was from the same stock; she was something higher than him.

Dealing with a screaming seven-year-old vowing never to return to Shinra made it easier to place himself _in loco parentis_ when speaking to her new mother about persuading her to return. As the years went on however, as his presence was sporadically but always felt around her, she gradually lost her fear, because he would never take her back by force if he hadn't already. He never spoke to her without persuading her to return, and more often than not gave the impression that he was only watching over her to make sure she never escaped Midgar. But he could no longer feel as a parent did to his child, not even when she retained her innocence, her youthful air, her radiating life force around her.

The paternalistic feeling died, but the reverence never did. It was only after the nightmare of the first Avalanche, of the entire department's near execution, that he was able to harden his heart enough to send Reno in his stead. He was not sorry that Reno failed. He was sorry however that she should fall back into Shinra's – his – hands in service of another. He would never admit it, but it was disappointment that made him strike her. That she should value herself so little as to give herself up for another lesser than her. Didn't she know, didn't she _feel,_ that she had a higher purpose than they? Utterly incomprehensible.

He could not but feel equal parts relieved and horrified once he caught up with her on Sephiroth's trail. It was the first time he'd seen her in company of so many people at once. It wasn't hard to see that she touched everyone in the group in some way already. That ease of familiarity, the openness of feelings, were yet tempered by something which kept her at a distance. She was the closest to them all, and yet by that same paradox, the furthest. But he was glad she was in good company, even if on a dangerous mission, and that his current orders superseded her recapture. Even if he never saw her again after this mission was completed and she gained the independence necessary to leave Midgar for good, he was happy for her. Happy that she would be safer in Strife's hands than his.

He could not but feel an immense loss when he finally heard of her death, especially as his last glance of her was when he neared his own, when she healed and saved him. For the longest time, he was lost in a world where she didn't exist anymore, and inexplicably it frightened him. Absurd that the world's grace and beauty should feel utterly absent with the loss of one woman. But she was no ordinary woman, and it took him more days to recover than anyone thought he would.

He thought hope returned when the Lifestream burst out and, for a split second, he thought he heard her voice. He knew, without looking, that it was her who saved them all, pushing Meteor back so that Holy can work its magic. He felt comforted for a moment in the middle of evacuating Midgar, but a niggle of unease filled him, as if her energies were somehow tainted this time. Impure with some malicious intent. Not like her aura at all.

It wasn't until he was shot at the crater that he had a vague suspicion of the contaminant that coloured his last impression of her. He only felt her true essence as the healing rain fell upon Edge, as he saw Rufus' injuries heal, and he finally understood this reverence he felt for her and her birth mother. Even in death, she was immortal. She was their protector. She was their carer.

She is the mother of all.

_- Finis -_


End file.
